He’s left no doubt that this is what he does: ever since he was inaugurated, Obama has taken one extreme step after the next to keep concealed both the details and the evidence of Bush’s crimes, including rendition, torture and warrantless eavesdropping.

President Obama has many other important decisions in front of him that put his campaign statements at odds with his responsibilities to the safety and security of American troops and the American public. Americans should hold out hope that President Obama may yet reverse himself entirely on the closure of Gitmo and that he will revive the use of harsh interrogation techniques if and when all other options are exhausted and the country is in imminent danger of attack. For now though, it’s enough that President Obama seems to be growing in office.

Salon: Joan Walsh writes, “For the first time in his presidency, I had the sick feeling that Obama was lying in his remarks on the photos”:

[On]nce when he said the new images “are not particularly sensational, especially when compared to the painful images that we remember from Abu Ghraib” — I simply don’t believe that — and again when he insisted “the individuals who were involved have been identified, and appropriate actions have been taken.” That is a flat-out lie. Out of eight prosecutions, mostly of so-called bad apples, only reservist Charles Graner sits in prison today, while the architects who “Gitmo-ized” Abu Ghraib and encouraged torture all went free.

Photographs are part of the historical record. Think of these images: black men hanging from trees in the American South; emaciated concentration camp survivors; prisoners shackled into cramped “tiger cages” in South Vietnam. Would this be a better world without those photos?

Trying to cover up atrocities because someone might be angry isn’t right and won’t work. Instead, the Pentagon should release the photos while making it clear that the U.S. repudiates such barbaric behavior and is committed to dismantling the culture that allowed it to occur.

If this consideration did drive the reversal of position, I think it is unfortunate. The US is more likely to get past the mistakes it made 5 years ago if it comes clean and seeks reconciliation than if it goes on trying to cover up the past even though everyone knows what happened.

It’s encouraging to know that, ultimately, there is a limit on how far Obama will go to launch or facilitate attacks America’s honor. That limit apparently is reached when generals tell him American troops may well die. It would be more encouraging if a lesser showing would suffice.

Washington Note: Lawrence B. Wilkerson, who was chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell, writes that by Cheney’s logic, the former vice-president “endangered the nation” for the entire second Bush term.

My investigations have revealed to me–vividly and clearly–that once the Abu Ghraib photographs were made public in the Spring of 2004, the CIA, its contractors, and everyone else involved in administering “the Cheney methods of interrogation”, simply shut down. Nada. Nothing. No torture or harsh techniques were employed by any U.S. interrogator. Period. People were too frightened by what might happen to them if they continued.

What I am saying is that no torture or harsh interrogation techniques were employed by any U.S. interrogator for the entire second term of Cheney-Bush, 2005-2009. So, if we are to believe the protestations of Dick Cheney, that Obama’s having shut down the “Cheney interrogation methods” will endanger the nation, what are we to say to Dick Cheney for having endangered the nation for the last four years of his vice presidency?

That the OLC lawyers never once cited the case of United States v. Lee, for example, in which the Reagan administration’s Justice Department prosecuted a Texas sherriff who had waterboarded suspects to extract confessions, is revealing, said Luban. The case, decided by the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in 1983, refers to waterboarding as “torture” at least a dozen times. It is “the single most relevant case on water torture” in United States jurisprudence, said [professor of legal ethics at Georgetown University David] Luban. . . . “It’s hard to avoid concluding that they did not mention it because it cast doubt on their legal conclusions,” said Luban.

Lindsey Graham says that, “if you were trying to commit a crime … you would not go around telling people on the other side of the aisle about it.” And that, as it turns out, is exactly what the public record shows: that the Bush Administration did not tell Democrats about what they were doing. For six months to two years after they started this program, and again when they were under pressure to end it, the Bush Administration did not go around telling people on the other side of the aisle about it.

Lindsey Graham says that’s evidence of criminal intent. And I think he may well be right.

The bottom line in all this is that we are at war for the past 8 years and now 9th year! Bush was bashed savagely for acting like a Commander in Chief even by Obama! But now the shoe is on the other foot and necessity becomes real!

The Bush bashing by the left and media was naive, and finally Obama has grown up! It is time for Obama’s friends to grow up too!!

I have concluded that these photographs must be terrible. Obviously, Cheney is terrified that their release would be convincing evidence of the war crimes committed by he and others within the Bush Administration. By reversing course on this matter, Obama has become a participate in the cover up of Bush Administration crimes.

The depraved nonsense spewed by Mr. Crocket is symptomatic of a GOP fanatic: Never mention, let alone concede, that innocents were tortured and/or detained with no rights whatsoever.
The Repub mantra seems to constitute a reversal of a time-honored legal maxim, with the new maxim being “let 10 innocents be tortured rather than one who’s guilty not confess”.
And now Obama emulates the tactics of the previous administration? God help us all.

Re Paul Mirgenoff’s argument about “American honor:” If America has to hide what it actually does, in order to protect its “honor,” then does it really have or deserve any honor in the first place?

The honorable thing to do would be to come clean and hold oneself accountable for past crimes and wrongs. And for a country that so brazenly crows about how superior it is to the rest of the world, how it is a model for foreigners, doing the honorable thing would hardly be much to ask, right?

For all its notions of superiority, America certainly demonstrated its willingness to stoop just as low as tinpot dictatorships do, in torturing random people it could get its hands on and trying to torture false confessions out of people to justify its wars (to the enthusiastic cheers of many of its citizens).

President Obama is correct to argue that releasing the photos at this point would add nothing to our knowledge of the Bush-Cheney regime’s war crimes and would inflame needless anger against American troops whom Obama is trying to withdraw from their fool’s errand in the Middle East.

The only benefit of releasing the photos would be to build support for arrest, indictment, trial, and punishment of Bush, Cheney, and their lackeys. But the cost would be too high.

There is a World Court at the Hague. I am befuddled why Obama does not want to use it? Is he scared he could wind up there? Crimes against humanity, you and I, caused by reckless ignorant deceptive people caused much hardship suffering and death, unnecesarily. Should these criminals not be given their day in court, or should we go on, whispering in the backroom, that Chaney is a, by proxy, baby killer?

I fully support investigations and prosecutions for these indisputable war crimes, but I find that I agree with Obama regarding the release of these photos. Use them as evidence in closed investigations and prosecutions, but nothing is gained by releasing them publicly: they will indeed be inflammatory. I am a longtime supporter of the ACLU, but the answer to Anthony Romero’s question last night “Are words less inflammatory than photos?” is a resounding ABSOLUTELY: there are reasons 1 picture is worth 1000 words! These photos will add nothing to the public record, they will only cause more anger, more recruiting by extremists, and increase the dangers to and deaths of both troops and civilians.

My experience is that in the absence of information, people imagine the worst possible case. The logic runs: we’ve all seen the earlier photos so if we can’t see these then they must be really terrible. I don’t think the photos turn people against the US; I think our actions do.

Think back on the rage in the Muslim world over a cartoon drawing of Mohammed. If graphic torture photos are released, the response from a hotly political, religious, emotional, largely sparsely educated mass of people could endanger the personal safety of any American travelling in the Middle East or Indonsia. It should never have been announced that there even are photos.

I suspect that many people still in power were complicit authorizing the torture. I suspect that if the new batch of photos are released, the outcry from the American people (and the world) will be so loud that a complete investigation of who knew what, and when, and who approved what, and who never objected will be demanded.

And I suspect that Americans will be shocked at the revelations and will demand full explanations, resignations, maybe even prison sentences for the people who lied to us and broke their oath to uphold the law.

I suspect that Americans were led, and are still being led, by people who, in time of crisis, failed us and who don’t want to be held accountable. Just like the bankers and business executives who ran the economy into the ground and still demand their golden parachutes, I suspect that the culprits are trying to hide their culpability and keep their air of respectability.

If they do not have the honor and courage to admit and defend their own decisions, how DARE they ask any soldier to risk his life. A great nation cannot be led by cowards.

Only the great can admit mistakes, the cowards lie. Are we a great nation or a nation afraid of the truth?

I cannot follow the storm over these pictures. Obama made another correct and logical decision, my admiration and faith in his administration grows every day.

What are these pictures to accomplish?
There is obviously no cover-up. The administration has admitted that these abuses have occurred, the facts are all in the public domain. What is not in the public domain and what I believe he is right in withholding are the voyeuristic images of human beings who have been subjected to treatment nobody should have to suffer.
In all this outrage over being deprived of the pleasures of the common peeping Tom I am not reading anything about the privacy rights of the people shown on these pictures.
If any of those who disagree with their withholding would like to have their own naked and disfigured bodies displayed on the front page of the tabloids, please let us hear that.
Otherwise, I can only reemphasize that Obama made another well-considered and logical decision. There is no use in further inflaming the situation in the Middle East – that would be just plain counter-productive. We need to decide what we want to achieve there.
War or Peace?

Does anyone have a cite for US v. Lee, the Fifth Circuit case from 1983 that is allegedly “the single most relevant case on water torture”?

On Lexis, the only US v. Lee from the Fifth that I have found is from 1984, not 1983 (744 F.2d 1124). It’s hard to see how this is a “relevant” case for defining “torture” when, according to the opinion, “[t]he sole issue Lee presses in this appeal is whether the trial judge abused his discretion in denying him a severance.”

I can posit several possible reasons not to release, or to at least delay, the release of these photos. 1) To avoid mucking up the President’s appearance at the Muslim conference set to occur in Cairo in early June. 2) To avoid providing evidence to courts in Spain and other countries seeking to prosecute war crimes under the UN Convention Against Torture. 3) It suggests that these acts were systematic, and not aberrations committed by “a few bad apples,” which also suggests that Generals Petraeus, Odierno, et alia, may not be the honorable warriors we believe them to be. I don’t find any of these reasons compelling.

Having read US v. Lee a second time, I’ve noticed that the first time the court uses the word “torture” it actually puts it in quotes. Here’ s the sentence:

‘Lee was indicted along with two other deputies, Floyd Baker and James Glover, and the County Sheriff, James Parker, based on a number of incidents in which prisoners were subjected to a “water torture” in order to prompt confessions to various crimes.’

That is, the court seems to simply be quoting, or using “torture” in a colloquial sense; it is not construing the actions as constituting torture as a matter of law. I’m very interested in what Professor Luban sees in this case.

Obama is on the horns of a dilemma and his reversal only makes him appear to be part of a cover up instead of a leader who promised transparency in his administration. The price of honesty usually comes high and now is the time to pay what was promised.
There are some strong arguements for not but the time has past for covering up the obvious.
Do the right thing Mr. Obama or suffer the consequences of your reversal.

Fear that showing these photos of Bush-Cheney approved torture will incite new violence against US troops substantiates the claim that the decision to torture detainees (is not only illegal and immoral, but) further endangers Americans (soldiers and others) and that the original decision to torture was, on this account, not in the best interest of US security.

But, then, must we also consider that all the “collateral damage” of invading iraq has dramatically increased hostility toward the US.

How can you hide the photos when Cheney and company are still denying what was done?

With Cheney and the right wing media in full howl insisting that “we NEVER tortured” and equatinging their brutality with fraternity pranks, Obama puts a lid on the evidence.

No one could have argued that waterboarding was not torture if the CIA tapes had been released rather than destroyed. The quickest way to silence Cheney would be to release the photos. If these pictures are as ugly as they sound, they would rip right through the euphemisms like ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’ that hide the reality of what was done.

Fail to identify what was done as war crimes and torture, fail to punish those who planned and carried it out, and you guarantee that another American president will do it again. This is no way to restore trust in America.

President Obama is now officially an extension of GWB on foreign policy. It’s interesting how photos were released regarding Abu Grahib and soldiers were sent to prison. Yet, no one is being penalized and no proof needed here. If these were enlisted men and women, they would have been prosecuted. Instead, class trumps fairness.

Sure, inflame ant-American feelings, put our troops in greater danger, and make their difficult jobs a lot tougher. Sound good? No, after weighing the pros and cons, I agree with Obama that we can’t afford to be so irresponsible.

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The Thread is an in-depth look at how the major news events and controversies of the day are being viewed and debated across the online spectrum. Compiled by Peter Catapano, an editor in The Times’s Opinion section, the Thread is published every Saturday in response to breaking news.